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Biotech / Medical : SARS and Avian Flu -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kikogrey who wrote (2605)	10/12/2005 3:34:05 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 4232

<"There certainly is a lot of hysteria, and right now, I think we need to put things into perspective."> Perhaps he sees different people to those I see, because I have seen zero hysteria anywhere. I have seen a lot of people thinking about it, learning about it, worrying about it, doing things about it, but no hysteria. Maybe he is doing what people have done for years and used the word paranoia when they mean fear, thereby devaluing both. Fear is different from paranoia and hysteria is different from fear and both are different from worry and none of the three are paranoia. Especially in regard to a threat which is much more realistic than Iraqi WMDs as a threat and about 1,000 times as dangerous. Even if Saddam had had some WMDs he wouldn't have been as dangerous to the world as what's on offer from H5N1. On birds looking sick <My point with regard to birds is just that when they "look" sick they are actually far sicker than they appear. A bird may look healthy to the untrained eye but actually show subtle signs of illness. By the time they have nasal symptoms they are usually ready to keel over. > The opposite is also true. They can look completely dead and be alive. Our budgie was unwell, hanging on to the rails of the cage with feet and beak. In the morning he was dead on the floor of the cage. Daughter Anita [who owned him] was upset. But after close examination and a trip to the vet, he was alive again. He got an injection of something [which would either finish him off or cure him from what was an infection]. That's the most dead I've ever seen anything with it still being alive. I hadn't checked for rigor mortis, but I had a good look and didn't see breathing. Obviously not a good enough look. He was quite elderly but had another year or so of happily flying around. Those birds are tricky! They can sneak H5N1 right past customs. Don't even need a passport. It's funny how customs wastes a huge amount of time hassling people about possible drugs, which is nothing to do with the customs people and they are the ones doing the smuggling anyway, but they let birds just cruise in after a migration from around the world, without so much as a beg your pardon. Mqurice

To: kikogrey who wrote (2605)	10/12/2005 3:43:22 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4232

What's the problem with just using eggs to make a vaccine? <Flu vaccine production currently requires the use of millions of chicken eggs. Federal health officials have commissioned studies in which high-tech production methods, using no eggs, are being tested.> There are millions of eggs in NZ sitting in the supermarket. I can buy them and produce loads of vaccine. Send the starter kit down and I'll get onto it. I could take 100,000 of those eggs, get 50,000 hens and they'd each produce 20 more eggs within a year giving 500,000 more hens which the following year would produce 10 million eggs and 5 million hens and those would produce more than enough vaccine for New Zealand. There are enough eggs right now to heavily limit the spread of H12N8. And we could export vaccine within a year or two. This northern winter is the crucial winter. By northern winter 2006 we should have enough Tamiflu, Relenza, and vaccine so that H5N1 is stymied. Mqurice